Wayne State University, in partnership with the University of Michigan and Drexel University, has launched a two-and-a-half-year study of the imagination - or l'imaginaire - of high-speed rail (HSR) in America. The study is part of a larger comparative international study piloted by Dr. Max Bergman at the University of Basel and led by French, American, South African, Indian and Chinese research teams that is exploring the role of the "imaginaries" in choices relative to train and rail infrastructures. In other words, the study will examine what motivates decision makers (both leaders and users) in regard to championing or using trains both in and of themselves and within the context of the future of transportation as a whole.

Actor Tom Skerritt is back to where his remarkable 50-year career began, taking part in an interview and question and answer session at the Hilberry Theatre at Wayne State University on April 22 at 5:30 p.m. "I learned a great deal about myself when I started at Wayne State," Skerritt told FOX 2's Jason Carr. "I had no idea what I was going to do but everything that I came to be started at Wayne State."

Wayne State University students gathered on campus to assemble toiletry kits, then traveled to the area around Cass Park to distribute the packages to the homeless. Additional bags were to be given to Covenant House in support of homeless youths. The program encourages students to donate and works with area hotels to secure items such as toothpaste, toilet paper and shaving cream. Since the initiative began in 2011, student athletes have collected and distributed nearly 70,000 items.

Graig Donnelly, director of Wayne State's Detroit Revitalization Fellows Program, appeared on Al Jazeera America to discuss individual and community efforts leading positive change in Detroit as well as the challenges the city faces moving forward.

The final applicant, Peter J. Hammer, is a Wayne State University law professor who offers an intriguing alternative - or addition. Although armed with plenty of intellectual ammunition (Ph.D. in economics, expertise on international development, legal scholar), Hammer's neither a number-cruncher nor finance expert, per se. He makes the argument that his very different perspective might also be useful to the judge. "You have to remember that municipal finance experts got us (Detroit) into this mess," says Hammer. Sophisticated financial schemes, including a quasi-legal swaps deal, mismanaged pensions and accounting sleight of hand contributed mightily to the city's financial collapse

The ongoing efforts to turn around bankrupt Detroit will be the subject of a course starting this spring at Wayne State University. The Detroit school announced this week that "Detroit: Metropolis in Transition" will run from May 7 to July 23, and is open to Wayne State students, guest students and non-degree-seeking professionals. It will meet Wednesday evenings at the school.

John Corvino was on Canadian television with a conservative Catholic public affairs show host when the ruling that briefly opened the door to same-sex marriage in Michigan was handed down. When he got the news, he took to Facebook to pop the question to his longtime partner: "Marry me, Mark. "The public venue for a private question was fitting for someone who has spent two decades advocating for the acceptance of gays and lesbians into the American mainstream (and the bonds of legal marriage). Corvino and Mark Lock didn't make it from their Detroit home to a county clerk's office before an appeals court handed down a stay, or postponement, of the ruling, but they aren't in any hurry. They held a commitment ceremony in 2005, legally entwined their lives shortly thereafter and consider themselves married.

The Wayne State University Police Department is lauded in a story about the advantages for entrepreneurs in Detroit. The article paraphrases Rachel Lutz, owner of the Peacock Room in the Park Shelton, as saying her store is on a block of Midtown that is patrolled by Wayne State University's police department. In a city where the average response time to the highest-priority 911 crime calls is nearly an hour, Ms. Lutz says she has phoned Wayne State's emergency line and had an officer inside her store in 90 seconds.

The Hilberry Theatre's season-closing production of "August: Osage County" will be running April 18-May 10. Tracy Letts' Tony Award-winning dysfunctional-family drama feature the return of James R. Kuhl, who earned his MFA in acting as a member of Hilberry's graduate repertory company in 2009. It's a rare case of a former WSU actor invited back to direct at his alma mater. Lavinia Hart, head of WSU's graduate acting program makes her Hilberry acting debut as unhinged, pill-poppin', truth-tellin' matriarch Violet Weston. The casting of a faculty member also is unusual at the Hilberry, Hart admits. "There is an unspoken policy here that we are here to support the ensemble company of MFA actors," she says. "If there are 'old' characters in the shows, then we coach actors in physical movement and appropriate stage makeup and vocal patterns, and we expect the company to stretch and have the range and ability to play anything that we throw to them."

Reports of Russian military and Russian allies moving into the eastern portion of Ukraine, and reports of shots fired between Ukrainian and Russian forces, beg the question: How close is Ukraine to civil war? Kevin Deegan-Krause, Wayne State University associate professor of political science and expert in Ukrainian politics, and Aaron Retish, Wayne State University associate professor of history and expert in Russian history and politics, joined Craig Fahle in a discussion about the situation in Ukraine.

Anthony Holt, Wayne State University police chief, and Harold Rochon, Detroit Police Department captain, joined Craig Fahle to discuss what causes youth violence and how to respond to the pervasive issue. On Thursday, April 17, 9 a.m.-4:30 p.m., "Understanding and Reducing Youth Violence Conference" will be held at Wayne State's Community Arts Auditorium. The conference is hosted by Wayne State University Police and The Target Group. Educators, law enforcement officers, health care workers, students, community groups and youth organizations are invited to attend.

Michigan runners gearing up for next week's 118th Boston Marathon are cautious but thrilled to be part of one of the nation's premiere races. "If anything, after last year's bombings it is making me even more excited to run it because it is showing everyone that you cannot mess with the running community. We will come back, and we will come back stronger than before," says Samantha Viola, who is participating in her first Boston Marathon. Viola, 23, has run several half marathons and other distances, but she's only run one marathon before - the one in which she qualified for Boston, the 2012 Detroit Free Press Marathon. She is running in memory of a family friend, Cassie Kenny, who passed away at the age of 15 of brain cancer. Viola, who will graduate from Wayne State University in May with a master's degree in social work, has no qualms about running in Boston after last year's tragedy. "Last year's bombings really made me realize the love I have for running," said Viola. "It really makes you stop and think about everything and the privilege I have to wake up every morning and go running. The runs meant so much more after the bombings, and the next morning I woke up and did a run dedicated to the victims and their families of the tragedy."

Beverly and Tim Butler's daughter Rebecca was 20 years old when she died of complications related to a rare lung disease. The Wayne State University marketing major was on the organ donor registry waiting for a lung transplant, but it didn't come in time. Since their daughter's death three years ago, the Butlers have continued to promote organ donation at Wayne State, working on an annual campaign to sign up students. April is National Donate Life Month and Secretary of State Ruth Johnson has been urging Michigan residents and students on campuses to sign up to become donors. "We made huge strides in expanding the organ donor rolls, with more than 1.4 million people added in the past three years alone," Johnson said last week during an event at Wayne State kicking off the donor drive. Before she died, Rebecca told her parents and her sorority sisters at Wayne State that she wanted to do an organ donation drive in the fall. To honor her memory, they followed through on her plans and got the campus involved in the Gift of Life Campus Challenge. The six-week challenge takes place over the winter and pits 14 colleges against each other in a bid to sign up the most students to the registry. Wayne State has won for most registrations every year since. Between 2012 and 2014, Wayne State Gift of Life has signed up 2,600 students.

In baseball, host Wayne State University beat Hillsdale, 13-5. It was the ninth straight win for the Warriors (25-9, 13-5 Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference). Eric Cunningham hit a two-run double as part of an eight-run third inning for WSU. In men's tennis, host Wayne State blanked Malone, 9-0. Clement Charriere and Melvin Joseph won singles matches for the Warriors (9-7, 8-2 GLIAC). In women's tennis, Wayne State beat host West Liberty, 8-1, in the regular-season finale. The Warriors (23-4) won all six singles matches and set a single-season school victory record. The NCAA Division II tournament selection takes place April 22.

The Bonstelle Theatre production of "Guys and Dolls" opened over the weekend and runs through April 19, 2014, and it's a sure bet for a swell night on the town. Director Michael J. Barnes makes sure everyone in his young company has a chance to prove what they're capable of - and the results are most impressive. Additionally, this show affords a perfect swan song for the Bonstelle Theatre Company's 2014 graduating class.

This story follows Wayne State University School of Medicine student Nick Frame and his "Match Day" journey over the last year. At Detroit's MGM Grand Hotel & Casino, with about 269 other graduates of Wayne State School of Medicine, Frame found out he had matched with Mercy Health St. Mary's Hospital in Grand Rapids as a first-year medical resident in family medicine. Despite studies that show the U.S. will face a shortage of about 130,000 doctors by 2025, the U.S. has an artificial cap on the number of doctors accepted into hospital residency training programs. While medical students are awarded medical degrees or osteopathic degrees, the M.D. or D.O. monikers, when they graduate, they can only be licensed by state medical boards as professional physicians after completing a residency program. To become a practicing physician, more than 40,000 medical school graduates each year compete for nearly 30,000 first and second-year residency slots. This year, 29,671 graduates matched into one of 9,600 accredited residency programs, including 16,400 graduates of U.S. schools and 9,287 graduates of international schools, according to the National Residency Matching Program.

General Motors has suspended two engineers in the first disciplinary action stemming from its mishandled recall of more than 2 million small cars for a deadly ignition switch problem. But the company also said a second ignition part in the cars must be fixed, boosting first-quarter recall costs above $1 billion. The suspensions, with pay, come from GM's own investigation into the recall. CEO Mary Barra promised Congress last week that she'd take action when appropriate, as lawmakers alleged that at least one company engineer tried to cover up the switch problem. "They have to be careful at this point not to over-react, despite all the pressure that's being put on them certainly by Congress, public pressure," said Peter Henning, a law professor at Wayne State University and a former federal prosecutor. "I've got to believe they have a HR (human resources) binder that would sink a battleship. Step one is usually paid leave," he said.

Some law students at Detroit's Wayne State University are urging the state to conduct a new environmental review of a long-planned expansion of Interstate 94 near the school. The school's Transnational Environmental Law Clinic says it's working with other groups concerned about the proposal. Plans call for adding lanes and service drives to I-94. State transportation officials say major work would start no sooner than 2018. An environmental impact statement was completed a decade ago. Students say much has changed and the previous review didn't appropriately study public transportation and community health effects.

Over the last 10 years, Wayne State's men's golf program has qualified for the NCAA Division II tournament nine times, including each of the last seven seasons. In 2009 and 2010, the Warriors made it as far as the finals of the NCAA tournament, which is the furthest the program has ever gone. "We're very proud of the last 10, 12 years," head coach Mike Horn said. "We put ourselves in the top three or four teams in the GLIAC (Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference) every year - a very competitive league and a very competitive region, so we have to be on top of our game every year when we tee it up."

The area around traffic lights where the driver must decide whether to proceed through a yellow light or stop the vehicle is called a dilemma zone. The yellow light is supposed to warn you when the green light is about to change to red, but that just amplifies the dilemma. A group of scientists used simulators to test what they call intelligent advanced warning systems to see how drivers would react. They concluded that drivers who saw advanced warning rarely tried to run the light; most "exhibited greater anticipatory slowing well before the intersection." Tim Gates, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at Wayne State University in Detroit, who was not involved in this research, said longer yellows would reduce the number of vehicles going through the intersection and have no impact on speed. "Implementation will never be widespread," Gates said of the extra warnings. "Some places have limited sight distances, high-speed approaches, and steep grades."